A Good Marriage is Really Glorified Friendship

4 min readJan 25, 2020

I have a friend who is a professional wedding planner. She has helped people with their wedding events for over 20 years. Sometimes, I help out on the big weddings to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the happy couple.

My friend has a good record of predicting the longevity of the marriages just from the wedding planning experience. These are some of her observations for those who tend to stay married:

The groom is a real part of the planning, not a silent presence.
Both the bride and groom are respectful of each other’s ideas.
They want their wedding to be nice, but they are easygoing, welcome ideas, and talk alot about how they want their guests to enjoy the event.
They have small to reasonable size wedding budgets.
They have a small to reasonable size number of attendants.
Their focus is on small, meaningful personal touches rather than glam and glitz to impress guests.
They are always polite to all the hired help.
They are always polite to their parents and siblings.

And these are her observations of the marriages that struggle or end in a short period of time:

The bride does almost all the decision-making and planning without the groom.
Early on, there are not requests, but demands and threats throughout the planning phase.
Big budget, luxury touches, and late payments to vendors, and constant arguing over costs.
Rejection of all ideas and compromises, believe that only the bride can make the decision.
Treatment of vendors and staff help is indifferent, rude, or outright demeaning.
During the wedding, the bride and groom are not together, except for the expected moments of the first dance, cutting the cake, etc.
The groom comes in at the last minute and complains, treats the staff like it is their fault, and generally sulks.
Getting drunk is the goal at the wedding reception.
Ongoing, public fighting with parents, siblings, bridal party members during planning and on the day of…